Interestingly, though, none of the GOP presidential
hopefuls in this snarling campaign called Clinton as soft on crime when she proposed
ending mass incarceration, reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenders
and reforming mandatory sentencing laws.

A rare consensus has developed among Democrats and
Republicans that the criminal justice system is, as former Attorney General
Eric Holder said, broken. In the 1990s’ War on Drugs, voters wanted to lock up
criminals and throw away the key.

President Bill Clinton signed the 1994
Violent Crime Control Act that created longer mandatory sentences and made
felonies of lesser crimes.

Now, with nearly half the inmates in federal prisons
incarcerated for drug offenses at a per-inmate cost of nearly $30,000 a year, attitudes
have changed. Most people think the law is unduly harsh, locks up too many
people -- especially minorities -- costs too much and does not make us safer.

President Barack
Obama, who has made criminal justice reform a priority, Wednesday commuted the
sentences of 61 nonviolent drug offenders. This brought his total commutations
to 248 -- more than the last six presidents combined, the White House said.

Two Alabama
prisoners had their sentences commuted: Ian Kavanaugh Gavin of Eight Mile and
Jerome Harris Jr. of Mobile. Both were convicted of intending to distribute
crack cocaine and having a firearm in their possession.

Since he has been president, Obama has commuted 92
life sentences. Among them: Dwayne Twane
Walker of Charlottesville, Va., who received life for a conviction of
conspiracy to distribute cocaine base.

“The power to
grant pardons and commutations…embodies the basic belief in our democracy that
people deserve a second chance after having made a mistake in their lives that
led to a conviction under our laws,” Obama said in a letter to the prisoners
who will be freed.

While he has issued only a fraction of the 10,000
clemency grants for nonviolent offenders Holder predicted last year, Obama vows
to do more. The Justice Department’s pardon
attorney quit earlier this year because she was frustrated with the slow pace
and the backlog of clemency requests.

No one, though, expects clemency to solve our prison
problems.

White House Counsel Neil Eggleston wrote on the White
House blog: “Clemency is nearly always a tool of last resort that can help
specific individuals, but does nothing to make our criminal justice system on
the whole more fair and just.”

Reform requires legislation, and some states have
taken the lead. In Congress, there’s bipartisan interest, and House Speaker
Paul Ryan promises the House will take up reform sometime this year.

Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia are
among cosponsors of the bipartisan sentencing
reform bill in the Senate. Sen. Mike Lee, a conservative Republican from Utah,
favors easing mandatory sentencing laws.

Not all are convinced, however. Sen. Jeff Sessions, a
conservative Republican from Alabama, is among those who worry that violent criminals
might be freed and commit more crimes.

In the 1990s, fear of recidivism motivated the
sledgehammer approach to judicial discretion, replacing it with mandatory minimum
sentences.

Eight years ago, although he opposed easing sentencing
laws, President George W. Bush signed the Second Chance Act, which provides grants
to faith-based and other groups to help prisoners train for jobs, fight
substance abuse and learn other skills to reenter society.

Since 2009, more than $400 million in Second Chance
grants has been distributed, and other federal programs also help offenders get
on their feet. Even so, our recidivism record is appalling.

Almost half of federal offenders released in 2005 were
rearrested for a new crime or for a violation of supervision conditions within
eight years – most within two years, the U.S. Sentencing Commission said in a study
released March 9. Of these, almost one-third were reconvicted.

The current epidemic of opioid and heroin addiction is
worse than the cocaine epidemic of the 1990s. We need to stop warehousing
nonviolent drug offenders and invest instead in prevention, treatment, rehab,
education and recovery. We can’t afford to do anything else.